[actionscripted]

1: Find logos you like, and a few from your industry.

2: Pick a few colors you like, and a few in your industry.

3: Pick a few fonts you like, and a few in your industry.

4: Find icons/shapes related to your business (google images: "[business type] icon" as a start, then branch from there based on what you find).

5: Mash it all together as many different ways a possible.

6: See what you like/dislike. Repeat as needed.

That's it, that's the secret. Get stuff you like and stuff that works and mash it together to see what happens. Then take your mash-ups and keep mashing and playing until you find something that fits. You don't have to love it, just get something that works. A lot of folks don't like their branding initially.

What designers won't tell you is that the process is sometimes just brute-forcing creativity and that's totally okay. You can't always feel inspired or have that "one perfect idea" and you've still gotta get stuff done.

[com2kid]

After spending too many hours unable to decide on a color theme (those color theme designers are not all that great IMHO) I saved myself the time and trouble and paid a real designer a good chunk of $ to get an actual logo, a great color scheme, and a PDF of design language guidelines.

I'd rank it as the single best decision I've made for my startup. With the design language guidelines I can throw together UI screens super easy, I just need to assemble the parts I've been given in an appropriate way. The logo receives constant positive feedback, and having a good set of colors simplifies a lot of UI and UX tasks.

No way could I have done it myself to this level of quality in anything resembling a timely fashion.

A good logo and color scheme can had for ~$1000. Yes that is a lot of money for a super early stage startup. Figure it'll take multiple days to do it yourself, 20 hours, $50/hr, unless you seriously low-ball your time, just pay someone else to do it.

Honestly, if making anything resembling a consumer facing product, throw a couple thousand and get preliminary design work done up front. Ask for a few sample UI layouts based on whatever rough ideas for "functionality" exist. The important part is learning how information is going to be structured on a page/screen. Colors, font, font size, font style? What sort of grid is being used, how much white space, rounded or non-rounded UI elements, drop shadows yes/no, what do confirmation/cancellation buttons look like?

Have someone who is good at it make all of these decisions. Having the same person make all of these decisions means there will be a consistent look and feel to the product.

[Wistar]

I consider $1000 for a good logo and design/use guidelines to be an incredible bargain.